Photo/Travel Program - The Parks of The Sierra Nevada Mountains

Now, a word from the Shameless Self Promotion Department at The Siggins Photography.

The 63rd Annual Virginia Highlands Festival kicks off this Saturday July 23 and runs through August 7.   The festival began in 1949 by Robert Porterfield, founder of the Barter Theater, as a simple one-week festival to showcase Appalachian arts and crafts. Since then the festival has now grown into a two-week event offering a variety of venues.

View from Moro Rock, Sequoia National Park

This year I'll be presenting a program at the festival on The Parks of The Sierra Nevada Mountains on August 6.   I'll be showing some of my photography and talking about Sequoia, Kings Canyon and Yosemite National Parks.  I'll also take the audience to Bodie California to experience a real gold rush ghost town and to Mono Lake for out of this world landscapes and sunsets.   The Virginia Highlands guide lists my program as four hours long, which is not right.  I don't think I can talk near that long and no one would stay that long.   Instead it will be between 2 and 3 hours depending on how much discussion we get into.

The program (I don't like the word lecture) is part travel show and part photography program.  I'll talk about the places we visited and also about how I took different photos, the gear I used, etc.

The festival charges $5 for the program.  You can buy tickets online here.  It will be in the Executive Auditorium at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, in Abingdon.

There are two other programs that are worth going to.  Chris Duncan is presenting Around the World in 180 minutes on Saturday, July 30 and National Geographic Photographer Bob Krist is presenting Behind the Scenes: Real Life Misadventures of a National Geographic Photographer Saturday July 23, 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m in the Grand Hall of the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center.